Although the Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, the signing ceremony was delayed by two days for the convenience of the caterers.

Henry Wisner of New York refused to sign the Declaration because the Congress had voted to remove philately from the list of unalienable rights.

Francis Lee signed the Declaration because his brother Richard was there to hold him down. His usual response to a difficult decision was to run like the dickens, thus earning himself the nickname “Lightfoot.”

Historians examining Benjamin Franklin’s private correspondence have discovered that John Hancock was a pompous jackass.

In the engraving of the signing of the Declaration on the reverse of the United States two-dollar bill, John Witherspoon is erroneously shown with the face of Abraham Clark, and vice versa.

It was not revealed until well after the end of the Revolutionary War that delegate “John Morton” of Pennsylvania was a Manx cat.

Carter Braxton of Virginia took the occasion of the signing as an opportunity for an impassioned classical oration on the assembly’s duty to defend liberty for all men, ending with a memorable flourish in which he ordered his slave Pompey to bring him the inkstand.